No prayer of the Dying-Banished from Death (2017)

Ahhh, Prayer of the Dying's full length album, a solo man project influenced black/doom, but this recent material which uses a more straight-forward black metal foundation, with the doom elements being utilized much less often. Here, we see this band at their most mature... and in the end; we have quite the beast of an album. The songs stay down tempo and rarely go beyond that. You've got sort of slow, slow, and real slow. While the music here isn't flashy or technical, the song structures are well thought out, and very effective at generating a lush, dark & somber atmosphere. The guitar tone here packs a lot of punch, and the riffs are heavy as all fuck. They pummel its listener with slow, monstrous blows until every bone in their body is crushed. On a couple of occasions, they will break into acoustic passages in which they do a fantastic job of creating a beautiful, haunting atmosphere. This sets it up for the heavy parts to hit even harder and feel much more aggressive. The guitar tone carries itself well already as it is, and the bass is still able to at least do its job as far as complimenting the guitar goes.The drumming is top notch. While not doing anything over top, it still does a great job at maintaining a powerful, precise rhythm throughout the entire album. It delivers a strong, gut wrenching vocal performance as well, his harsh vocals would improve over time, and especially his cleans, yet his performance is still brutal as hell, and he does a pretty good job of pronouncing the lyrics so they can be somewhat easily understood. I highly recommend this for any fans of Black/doom metal, as well as anyone who doesn't really know much about the genre and wants to see what it has to offer.
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Review by Paul Caravasi